State officials said Tuesday their recommended plan to clean up a decades-long environmental spill from the AVX Corp. manufacturing facility in Myrtle Beach will do more to help residents affected by the contamination than any of the other cleanup proposals they have studied.

Although deed restrictions on private property are possible under the proposal outlined Tuesday, the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control said the proposed plan would eliminate groundwater pollution in half the time of other proposals.The contamination – with a degreaser called trichloroethylene, or TCE – is located in a roughly 10-block neighborhood north of AVX’s facility on 17th Avenue South. AVX, which makes parts for electronics equipment, used TCE for decades and dumped the used chemical onto the ground before discontinuing its use in 1993. The TCE worked its way through soil to the groundwater, where it eventually migrated throughout the neighborhood.

TCE has been linked to cancer and other health problems but the neighborhood’s contamination is not considered a health threat because the groundwater is not a drinking water source.

Even so, some residents said Tuesday the pollution has hurt property values.

“It’s sad that because of AVX, now we have to suffer,” said Linda Tarte, who lives in the Bent Oak Estates neighborhood near AVX.

Tarte said residents want to sell their homes but can’t get market value because of the contamination….